Kevin Leiva was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Kevin moved to the United States when he was 10 years old. After high school Kevin found pottery and for most of his pottery career Kevin worked at a high production pottery. Now Kevin has his own pottery studio and runs a wholesale pottery business and a painting and pressure washing business. Kevin spent a lot of time at Arrowmont volunteering and taking classes and has done a work study program.

Gina Zycher is a studio potter in Los Angeles, California. She has always enjoyed creative pursuits but never felt such a strong pull to create as she did when she started working with clay in 2014. She strives to make pieces that are simple and modern with a bit of character. When not at the studio, Gina likes to cook, dote on her cat, and explore LA.

Dean McRaine has been a professional potter for 30 years, on Kauai since 1991. Dean is mostly self taught and consequently he has explored some unconventional pathways in his work: raw glazing, cone 10 oxidation firing, WVO (vegetable oil) firing, and Dean’s favorite technique, colored clay millefiori.

Dana Bechert is a full time ceramic artist living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Dana was raised on the Connecticut shoreline by two artisan parents. Growing up Dana was introduced to various trades and skill sets, including pottery. Dana attended the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore Maryland. Upon graduating with a degree in Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2012, Dana started her eponymous ceramics studio and has been working as a full time potter ever since. In addition to pottery, Dana spends lots of time working in her large vegetable garden and putting her pots to use in a variety of cooking disciplines.

Gadsden, Alabama is Parker Hunt’s home town. At age 11 Parker and his family moved to Havelock, North Carolina when his step-dad received orders to Cherry Point. At the time that was a pretty drastic change for Parker. Until Parker’s mom remarried, his grandfather had the most impact in Parker’s life. So leaving behind the Sunday evenings fishing off the peer and then to “The Chief” for banana splits with his grandfather was hard.

Nick Kesler is a 32 year old man who has a beautiful wife, Laura and 10 year old son, Rhett. Nick loves to build things like decks and houses, but most of all Nick likes to throw pots in his patio studio in Lakewood, WA.

Michael Rice is an Irish Artist who specializes in Ceramics. He is particularly interested in firing procedures such as Raku, Smoke and Saggar firing; his work is also is concerned with geometry, gestalt principals and archetypal forms.

Frank Nemick’s work flows from his subconscious. Frank explores his psyche’s despair and hope. Frank tries to explore humanity’s despair and hope. By using abstraction and irony to convey these basic human feelings, Frank tries to show our fragility and our strength. And our folly.

Frank is influenced by his past career as a firefighter. Seeing suffering and loss daily, despair is often a foregone conclusion. Observing people cope, leads to hopefulness. A background in philosophy helps to inform Frank’s work with hope in the face of despair, and of the angst of being human.

Frank tries to offset despair with hope, and beauty. To bring some respite to the human condition.

Courtney Murphy has been a studio potter in Missoula, MT for the past four years. Courtney first moved to Montana in 2009 as a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation. Afterwards Courtney moved to Missoula as a resident at The Clay Studio of Missoula and decided to stay. Courtney studied Ceramics at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. Courtney’s designs are influenced by simplified abstractions of nature, folk art, mid-century modern forms and shapes, as well as patterns and textiles. Courtney is compelled by the variation found in handmade objects and likes the personal connection that they help to create as they leave her studio to become part of somebody’s daily routine.